[vollmond]

This trial has shown me that juries need another option besides Guilty and Not Guilty. They need to be able to decide that a case is Not Proven, which leaves open the possibility for a retrial if additional conclusive evidence or testimony is uncovered.

I know that technically a hung jury has the same result, but there's a lot of pressure on a jury to reach some sort of conclusion. It's bad for a guilty person to walk scot-free forever because of prosecutorial or police incompetence, and it's also wrong to overlook flawed investigations and trials to find someone guilty.

Having said all that, I believe that Westfield is involved somehow in the death of Danielle, but the prosecutors have not proven it beyond a reasonable doubt. I predict that the jury will find him guilty on the Child Porn charge, but hang on the kidnapping and murder charges. That way they can punish him, but give the prosecution more time for investigation and a chance to retry him with more conclusive evidence.

[Politicalmom]

So you believe that a person should just be tried until the prosecution can manage to get the evidence to fit? How many times would you allow this? And there would be no penalty for bringing an early trial without enough evidence?

That doesn't sound like a place I would want to live.

[billbears]

They need to be able to decide that a case is Not Proven, which leaves open the possibility for a retrial if additional conclusive evidence or testimony is uncovered

I agree!! Let's just throw out the 5th Amendment altogether. Heck why not the whole Bill of Rights? What kind of nation do you want to live in? The Constitution according to vollmond?

[Illbay]

You cannot "retry" someone based on "More conclusive evidence." That is known, if you didn't know it, as "double jeopardy," and is specifically forbidden by the Constitution.

This is based on the axiom "better a guilty man go free than an innocent man be punished."

[jiggyboy]

"First, then, let us take ostensible acquittal. If you decide on that, I shall write down on a sheet of paper an affidavit of your innocence...Then with this affidavit I shall make a round of the Judges I know...I shall lay the affidavit before him, explain to him that you are innocent, and guarantee your innocence myself. And that is not merely a formal guarantee but a real and binding one...

"...[I]f I get a sufficient number of Judges to subscribe to the affidavit, I shall then deliver it to the Judge who is actually conducting your trial. Possibly I may have secured his signature too, then everything will be settled fairly soon, a little sooner than usual...[H]e can grant an acquittal with an easy mind, and though some formalities will remain to he settled, he will undoubtedly grant the acquittal to please me and his other friends. Then you can walk out of the Court a free man.

"So then I'm free," said K. doubtfully.

"Yes," said the painter, "but only ostensibly free, or more exactly, provisionally free...That is to say, when you are acquitted in this fashion the charge is lifted from your shoulders for the time being, but it continues to hover above you and can, as soon as an order comes from on high, be laid upon you again...

"The documents remain as they were, except that the affidavit is added to them and a record of the acquittal and the grounds for granting it. The whole dossier continues to circulate, as the regular official routine demands, passing on to the higher Courts, being referred to the lower ones again, and thus swinging backwards and forwards with greater or smaller oscillations, longer or shorter delays.

"These peregrinations are incalculable. A detached observer might sometimes fancy that the whole case had been forgotten, the documents lost, and the acquittal made absolute. No one really acquainted with the Court could think such a thing. No document is ever lost, the Court never forgets anything. One day -- quite unexpectedly -- some Judge will take up the documents and look at them attentively, recognize that in this case the charge is still valid, and order an immediate arrest.

"I have been speaking on the assumption that a long time elapses between the ostensible acquittal and the new arrest; that is possible and I have known of such cases, but it is just as possible for the acquitted man to go straight home from the Court and find officers already waiting to arrest him again. Then, of course, all his freedom is at an end."

-- Franz Kafka, The Trial

[Mr. K]

The reasons for double jeapoardy are compelling. You cannot allow a vindictive prosecutor to go after someone time after time. They get one crack at it.

Imagine what beelzebubba and the hildebeast would have done had they had the power to go after someone that wsy..?

[jwh_Denver]

Not Proven

Not Proven is not guilty. The Constitution in the spirit of the law wanted foreclosure on a case brought before a court. Either guily or not guilty. There has to be finality, otherwise the government could string a case out for years and screw up the person's life forever.

It is up to the prosecution to bring the charges before the court. If they bring all charges they can then the jury has to decide on each one. If the prosecution thought it needed more time on the kidnapping and/or murder they could have tried him just on the child porn.

Just on a human behavior basis you never want to give another option to the jury. Not Proven would take the onus off them to really think about the evidence presented amd make a decision, guilty or not guilty.